Madam Speaker, I appreciate the speech of the hon. member opposite. As she well knows, the equalization formula is intensely complex and attempts to address fiscal disparities among sub-national governments across the country. Her argument is that one of the elements of the 33 indicia of fiscal capacity, which presently make up the formula and are weighted according to an even more complex formula, namely, non-renewable resources, should be removed from the formula or possibly weighted differently than it presently is.
That, in and of itself, sounds like a bit of a plausible argument. After all, these resources are not renewable. Once they have been dug or pumped out of the ground, they no longer exist, and possibly the sub-national governments should be able to keep whatever royalty revenues are generated from those things. It sounds like an attractive idea.
However, I wonder why her argument that non-renewable resources should be removed from the formula, or at least differently weighted in the formula, should prevail over the argument in the other part of the House, which wants to remove renewable resources from the formula. Specifically in the case of Quebec, it is hydro. It wants to have that part no longer weighted as far as revenue generation capacity in Quebec. Then in other parts of the country we have people working in manufacturing or something like that where there is no particular resource involved, renewable or not, yet that is weighted as an element of fiscal capacity.
I would be interested in her response to why non-renewables should be removed from the formula over renewables or over people who end up working in manufacturing jobs.